Neil Peart: 1952–2020

I am sorry to say that I cannot recall who introduced me to the music of Rush when I was a freshman in college in the early 90s. Memory is a tricky thing, and significant moments can slip by in the current of their consequences. But at some point, I acquired Chronicles, a collection of the band’s work through the Presto album.

I grew up in a household that played the same records of Beethoven and Mozart every Saturday after church and whose musical adventurism extended to watching Hee Haw after sunset the same evening. I got introduced to some of Pink Floyd’s songs in high school — we don’t need no education was my chant through much of those years of indoctrination — but on the whole, my personal knowledge and deviation from my parents’ tastes was limited to seeing Bach as superior to Mozart, along with occasional odds and ends that my friends had on.

And then I heard “Subdivisions,” the first song on the Signals album. I had already picked up on the complexity of their music from the earlier works in the compilation, and the lyrics spoke of a dystopia akin to something out of Orwell, of equality and free will, of rebellion and celebrity — and blessedly, not of a single insipid love story. (More about that in a bit.) The opening of “Subdivisions,” however, had a part with snare, bass, high hat, and ride cymbal that I played over and over. How one person — Neil Peart, according…